"He's just such a cool character. A nice easy going guy who you can't help but like."

Kinda thought he would be Top 50 and I thought he would appear ahead of Atom Eve, but I guess I was wrong on both counts. Oh well, life must go on.

Allen is the product of a genetic experiment that would create a super Unopan capable of fighting the Viltrumites. Of all the attempts, Allen was the only fetus that survived the experiment with his mind and body intact. The process gave him super strength and speed, amazing healing abilities, high resistance to injury, the ability to travel in space unaided, near-light speed flight and reflexes and telepathy. He was trained from infancy to fight and was never defeated until his first fight with an actual Viltrumite. When his people learned that the experiment was a failure, they scrapped it and Allen became a "Champion Evaluation Officer" and traveled space looking for beings strong enough to beat him so they could be used against the Viltrumites.

Early in Invincible's career he was called by his dad to take care of an attacking alien. When Mark got into space he started to fight Allen. During the fight Allen was saying strange things about having a champion and Mark being a replacement. Eventually Mark asked for a break and then an explanation. It turned out Allen was actually coming to Earth to evaluate its champion instead of Urath. Thanks to Mark, Allen was able to keep his job and he left for Urath.

When Allen returned to the Coalition of Planets he was shocked to hear there was a Viltrumite on Earth. He came back as quick as he could to warn Invincible. Invincible explained that his father was the Viltrumite and had already left Earth. Allen was shocked and confused because a Viltrumite has never done anything of the sort. He explained that the point of the Coalition was to halt the expansion of the empire. He saw this as an opportunity to strike at the empire. He left Earth and returned to the Coalition.

After Allen left Invincible for a second time he returned to his home on Talescria, capital of the Coalition of Planets. Allen immediately told the good news to the council and they were as excited as he was. He left the council and went to his girlfriend's apartment. Telia, his girlfriend, is another species and a very sexual one at that which proves troublesome for Allen whose people have forbid any form of physical love. Allen eventually breaks down and allows himself this moment with Telia. Afterwards Allen and Telia went out to eat where Allen enjoyed some of his favorite food. During the meal a Viltrumite scouting party attacked Allen. The group demanded to know everything about what he told the council but Allen denied them anything they didn't know and the party quickly eviscerated him. Luckily Allen was saved and put into a stasis pod that allowed him to heal.

After months of healing Allen awoke and accidentally ripped apart of the machine with his newfound strength. Shortly after a nursebot gave him a physical Thadeus, head of the council, entered and revealed that Allen's body and changed and adapted to his recent beat down making him near or at Viltrumite power levels. Allen questions this because no clear-cut power level has ever been found for a Viltrumite. Thaddeus asks for the nursebot to leave and reveals he is in fact a Viltrumite rebel. He goes on to say that Invincible may be the key to ending the reign of their empire. However, he explains that Allen must only report to him now because he believes there may be a mole in the council.

82. Witchblade (40 points)

Year first appeared; 1995

“She’s a cop, beautiful, and she can kick your ass two sides of Wednesday. Combine that with the power of the mystical glove, the Witchblade, Sara Pezzini is a force to be reckoned with.”

Sara Pezzini was born on November 18, 1970 and is an NYPD homicide detective. Her father, Vincent “Frank” Pezzini was a police officer at the NYPD. Vincent’s partner was Joe Siry, who is the Captain at Sara’s precinct. He was shot and killed while he was on duty. Her mother’s name was not revealed and Sara has no idea where she is at the beginning. When Sara was thirteen years old, she was kidnapped by her female therapist and brought to two men, one of which was Ian Nottingham.

Sara went undercover to an auction at the Rialto Theater. Kenneth Irons, the man who at that time owned the Witchblade, was attempting to unlock the powers of the Witchblade by allowing anyone to bid and try it on. Her partner, Michael Yee, was captured and beaten badly. As the enemies were about to shoot Yee, Sara jumped in front of the bullets. As Sara was dying on the ground, the Witchblade decided to choose Sara as its new bearer. The Witchblade healed all her wounds and gave her the power to defeat her enemy. Unfortunately, she could not save Yee from dying who was hit by a bullet anyways.

Sara continues working as an NYPD homicidal detective with the Witchblade now attached to her. She also works with a partner named Jake McCarthy. The two of them grow close, and Jake was determined to find out more about his partner. However, Sara was reluctant to tell him much about her. Sara was later told about her father’s killer from the Captain of the 18th precinct Joe Siry. She learns that a criminal known as the Microwave Murderer was the killer. Sara set out to bring the loose criminal in. When Sara finally confronted the Microwave Murderer, she tells Sara that she was not the one that killed her father. After Sara was suspended from the force due to a previous mission, she was offered a job at another place. It turns out that it was a trap, Sara ends up getting kidnapped. However, Sara would then be saved by Ian Nottingham. She soon loses the Witchblade to Nottingham. Nottingham offers the Witchblade back to Sara, but she refuses to retrieve the Witchblade. Sara later meets up with her father’s sister, Aunt Ruth. Ruth tells Sara more about her father’s past but she was obviously hiding more than she told. Sara also discovers a picture of her father with Kenneth Irons, a suspicious Sara now is determined to find out more about her father. Sara would eventually retake the Witchblade, except for the red gem on it, which was taken by Kenneth Irons.

Jake would later get seriously injured and Sara would get a new partner named Eric Sketh. Eventually Jake would heal up and return to his job as Sara’s partner. Sara soon learns that the real killer of her father was Joe Siry himself. He reveals that he killed Vincent because he had a hidden agenda for Kenneth Irons, but Vincent began to interfere so it was the only way to keep Sara safe. Later, Ian Nottingham meets up with Sara again and he tells her about their destiny. He confessed to her that he loves her and that it was their destiny to be together. Unfortunately for Nottingham, Sara declines. On several other adventures, Sara has teamed up with many others including Lara Croft, Aspen Matthews, the Magdalena named Patience, Jackie Estacado (who was one of the wielders of the Darkness), Wolverine, and Elektra. Sara and Lara Croft become best friends. Later Sara is knocked into a coma when someone attacked her at a church. Jake would look out for Sara while she was in a coma and he would confess his love to Sara and his knowledge about her Witchblade. However, he falls into a coma when he was attacked. Eventually she would re-awaken and meets Detective Patrick Gleason. Sara would meet the Curator and learns that the Witchblade is “one of the thirteen.” Sara visits the curator’s shop and is attacked by demons. She begins investigating the demon attacks even after Magdalena warns her not too. She learns about a Catholic conspiracy.

Later, Sara and Gleason attack the Catholic church, but end up having to fight more demons. Sara was able to kill the demon god but dies in her efforts. However, Gleason was able to revive Sara with a totem that was given to them by the Curator. Eventually Sara would learn the true origins of the Witchblade from the Curator. She goes into a three-day trance that helps her learn more about the Witchblade. She discovers about all the previous bearers and learns that all of them were women. It is revealed that the Witchblade is male and it requires a female host in order to become whole. Gleason and Sara begin to grow closer to each other. Gleason was finally able to get Sara to go on a date with him. However, the two were interrupted by Nottingham who was seeking help from Sara to defeat the Yakuza. She agrees to help him but would quickly discover that Nottingham had other plans and was tricking her into helping him. She ends up arresting him and returns home to Gleason. They begin to get intimate again but was interrupted again by a phone call. It ends up that Jake has woken up from his coma.

Sara and Gleason head over to the hospital to visit Jake. Jake would soon be released from the hospital and invites Sara up to the top of the Empire State building. Jake reveals that he is a demon possessing Jake’s body. The demon tries to take over Sara’s body because of her connection to the Witchblade. She fights back and would be able to defeat the demon. Jake regains control and ends up shooting himself to stop the demons. Gleason arrives the second Jake pulls the trigger, and the emotional Sara falls into Gleason’s arms. She confesses to him that she might be pregnant. After Jake’s funeral, Sara heads over to the Curator’s shop and he reveals that he knows about her pregnancy. When Sara finally returns to the police station, she bumps into a girl named Danielle Baptiste. Gleason later visits Sara in her office where she reveals that she had not had sex in over a year. Later, Sara and Gleason would head over to the curator's shop where she meets Danielle Baptiste again. Danielle agreed to take over the Witchblade for Sara, who was skeptical of giving something so powerful to a complete stranger. However, Sara decides it was best for her new baby to pass the Witchblade on to someone else.

81. Boy Blue (41 points)

Year first appeared: 2002

"The best character in Fables, and the one Willingham hates the most. How else do you explain the way he's put this poor guy through the wringer time and again. The fucked up shit that has happened to this poor guy, makes me sad just thinking about it."

Yeah, I can see some angry people for this one.

Before coming to Fabletown, Boy Blue was an active fighter against the Adversary. He joined the fight during the time of Napoleon Bonaparte (whose campaigns Blue thinks were caused by some sort of "sympathetic magic" from the Fable worlds). This was at the tail end of the Adversary's campaign against the European fables, with most of them having either escaped to the mundane world, been enslaved or killed.

Blue fought with Colonel Bearskin's Free Company, eventually becoming the colonel's aide-de-camp. He survived "Boxen, Ruby Lake, Oakcourt, and the hellish rout at Hollyfield", among others. His last battle was a defense of the castle guarding the last portal to the mundane world. A ragtag force, including Robin Hood and his Merrie Men, were to hold the fort while a single ship took as many people as possible to the new world.

The day before the battle, a woman who claimed to be Red Riding Hood rode into the fort nearly dead from arrow wounds. She and Blue quickly became infatuated with each other, to the extent that she suggested that Friar Tuck should marry them so that Blue would have a seat on the last ship. Citing his duty, he refused. Arriving for battle in the morning, he learned his new orders: he would observe the battle from a high parapet and, at the appropriate time, would use a powerful but poorly-understood item known as the Witching Cloak to teleport himself to the ship. Fabletown needed to know what had happened, Bearskin told him, and he wanted Blue and Riding Hood to be together. Unfortunately, when Blue arrived on the ship, he discovered that Riding Hood was not there. Not wanting to live without him, she had given up her spot and stayed behind.

Boy Blue serves as Snow White's office gopher and clerk. His flying monkey Bufkin is Fabletown's librarian. Blue is one of Fabletown's most skilled musicians; he takes his horn with him everywhere. He will occasionally try to get gigs in Harlem jazz and blues clubs, but is always told that he is too young, too white or "too hayseed". His roommate is Pinocchio; the two of them, along with Flycatcher are best friends. Blue seems to live a typical "nerdy" lifestyle, avidly reading comic books and playing board games. He wears Chuck Taylor All-Stars.

Blue's life changed after Red Riding Hood suddenly appeared in Fabletown, claiming to have recently escaped the Adversary. She was initially angry at Blue, claiming that he had abandoned her to the Adversary's forces. However, she soon sought him out and said she was sorry and wanted to resume their relationship. After a sexual encounter, he realized that she was not the Riding Hood he remembered (it transpired that she was Baba Yaga using Red's form as a mystical disguise). Along with three wooden soldiers, she interrogated him under severe torture for several days, breaking all his fingers, before having the soldiers deliver him, along with a message from the Adversary, to the Woodlands business office.

Against Snow's objections, Blue had Dr. Swineheart patch him up and bind the Vorpal Sword to his hand so that he could fight in the Battle of Fabletown where he was injured by gunfire. Dr. Swineheart continued to rehabilitate him, doing so good a job that Blue was able to play his horn again.

With the election of Prince Charming as mayor, Blue resigned from the government. One night, he abruptly left for the Homelands, taking the Vorpal Sword, the Witching Cloak and Pinocchio's body. Using the now-known full capabilities of the Witching Cloak (it provided impregnable armor; could not be burnt, stretched or ripped; provided endless personal carrying capacity; and allowed a large degree of shape-shifting), Blue cut a swath of destruction across the Homelands. He killed thousands of soldiers, killed and impersonated multiple governors (always ordering his underlings to lower tax rates), slew a dragon through cleverness and guile, and defeated the three knights of the Rus. The knights were magically connected to Baba Yaga; the fact that their decapitated heads kept talking alerted Blue to the fact that she was still alive and a prisoner of Fabletown.

During the Emperor's bimonthly public address, Blue impersonated a peasant sweeping in front of the throne. This got him close enough to decapitate the Emperor. But before he could escape, the Snow Queen encased him in a block of ice. He woke up without any of his magical equipment, imprisoned in Geppetto's cabin and soon (in exchange for Pinocchio's body) learned the full story behind the Empire's rise. Geppetto also promised to bring him Riding Hood, but this brought a nasty shock: the version Blue had known at the castle had been a spy and just another copy of the original. The "true" Red Riding Hood had no idea who he was. A heartbroken Blue called the Witching Cloak to him and slew Geppetto's guards, before he made his escape back to Fabletown (along with Riding Hood).

Unbeknownst to the Fabletown community (which thought Blue had stolen its valuable magical devices), Blue had been on a mission from Prince Charming. In addition to its other properties, the Witching Cloak had infinite storage space. Blue emptied every library in the Homelands, bringing Fabletown hundreds of volumes of intelligence. Unfortunately, this could not be made public, so Blue had to stand trial. He was sentenced to two years of hard labor at the Farm, Fabletown's upstate annex for non-human looking Fables. Rose Red, the Farm's administrator, considered him a hero, and thus defined "hard labor" in very loose, general terms. Blue led the construction of Bigby's house in Wolf Valley and served as Bigby's best man when he married Snow. There have been hints in recent issues that Blue and Rose Red are getting romantically attached to each other, however Rose Red ultimately rejects Blue, who had acted too late.

During the war to reclaim the homelands, Blue had the job of transporting back and forth from numerous points to act as messenger and delivery boy to all on the Glory, Fort Bravo, Fabletown, Wolf Manor, The Farm, Haven, and the hotspot in the center of the Empire where Briar Rose was stationed for her part. Everything was running smoothly until the Empire made final desperate attempt to shift the tide. Blue was at Fort Bravo when a Korta Vulma Urso arrow was shot intending to kill Bigby. Blue threw his arm up, covered in the Witching Cloak, but it managed to punch through enough to scratch Bigby's neck. The effects of the arrow caused both to be knocked out for a number of days. Upon awakening, Blue kept what's left of the arrow sticking in his arm and continued to use the Witching Cloak to retrieve weapons and ultimate bring about the end of the war by using the Vorpal Sword to chop the head off the Emperor.

In the aftermath of the war, Blue has been found mostly at the Knights of Malta Hospital as Doctor Swineheart tries to work on carefully removing the remainder of the arrow. Given the uncertainty of the effects of the magic, Swinehart decided that Blue could not be put out with anesthetics while operating. Blue has been forced to suffer through the numerous operations while awake and in obvious pain. Swinehart successfully removed the arrow, having pieced it back together before pulling it out so as they’re being no possibility of some of it remaining in Blue's arm. However, an infection set in, causing him greater discomfort than before. That infection was later revealed to be caused by a minute piece of the Witching Cloak still being lodged in Blue's arm despite earlier efforts; its magic led to the arm being gangrenous to point of needing amputation at the elbow.

Boy Blue's condition continued to worsen despite both Frau Totenkinder and Doctor Swineheart's best efforts. He was moved to The Farm after Fabletown collapsed, where Flycatcher attempted to counteract Blue's condition. Flycatcher's magic was unable to remedy the situation and he told his friends that it was time to say goodbye. Rose Red admitted her love for Blue and attempted to marry him, but Blue turned her down, telling her that she was merely attracted to the excitement of what was happening. The morning after everyone wished him goodbye, Boy Blue died. He was buried on the hill, which overlooks the baseball field in Flycatcher's kingdom.

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